The Bronze Bangle
by Zeng Li
Summary: Revised yet again, this is the story about how Reno came to keep a Bronze Bangle as his lucky charm. This version is nearly completely different from prior ones.


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The Bronze Bangle  
by: Zeng Li  


Reno rolled his head to one side, looking out his window at the city below. From high above in his hospital room, he could look down on the massive amount of destruction he alone had caused the city of Midgar. The Sector 7 plate was rubble, still smoldering around the edges. An eighth of the city, gone at the touch of a button.

He reminded himself again that he was not drunk when he did it. It was his mission, as per President Shinra, Heidegger, and even Tseng himself. He could not have disobeyed the direct order. Despite his present injuries, Reno considered himself lucky to be alive and well enough to give one last thought to those whom he mercilessly wrecked havoc and death upon.

He tried to take a cleansing breath, but his bruised ribs protested. Was it all worth it to exterminate a small rebel faction? It was a significant portion of the city, now reduced to rubble. Not easy to overlook.

"Cruel," he said to himself. Part of him never wanted to look down on the carnage he caused. Maybe then, the death below wouldn't be real.

How much more of the city had to be destroyed, between the rebel group blowing up reactors and the President dropping plates? Were the Turks no longer trusted with exterminating resistance?

He tried to relax, the painkillers keeping him a little sleepy but not seeming to do anything to relieve the discomfort in his abused body. Soft footsteps approached. He turned his head towards the door, away from the wreckage his window overlooked.

There was a little emotion in his boss's face. Some of it was concern; some was pity. Was it for the injured Turk lying in the hospital bed, or was it for Midgar's tremendous loss, both lives and form? Usually Turks took somber moments like this much better than that.

Someone else entered the room behind Tseng. Tseng introduced the somewhat timid woman who Reno recognized immediately...after all, he'd helped scout her out. And, he had a pretty good idea why she was here.

"Reno, I want you to meet Elena Clark. She's been activated as the newest member of the Turks. We need someone to fill in for you since it seems you'll be side-lined for a while."

Reno looked past Tseng at the blond woman who was seeming a little shy. "We've already met," he told his boss, knowing Tseng already knew that fact.

Elena walked slowly to the side of the patient's bed. "Don't worry, Reno. We'll get Avalanche for this!"

Reno shifted a little. "Sorry, newbie. I want revenge myself."

"Besides, Elena," Tseng added. "At the moment we're strictly under Shinra's orders. We're on call right now, but things often change suddenly in this business."

"Y-yes, sir!"

Reno looked out the window once more. "So, are you guys gonna let me take root in this God-forsaken place, or are you gonna get me outta here?"

"Calm down, Reno," said Tseng. "You can go home after the doctor checks you over again and clears you. You know the drill..."

Reno, usually one anxious to get out of hospitals, moved stiffly and try to make himself more comfortable in bed. He refrained from using his right arm, which was presently covered under the blanket and struggled to adjust his back and rear leveraging with only his left. Elena innocently touched his right arm to try to assist him, and Reno flinched, looking at her as though ready to strike. She let go and backed away from his venomous stare.

Tseng knew. The doctor had told him.

Reno stopped shifting around and stared solidly at the ceiling. The pain in his bruised ribs occupied his mind adequately, the slightly cracked one leading the bruised other two in a chorus of hurt. Then of course there was his right arm...

"I'm sorry," Elena's voice seemed to squeak.

Reno squeezed his eyes shut and arched his neck back. Slowly, he drew his arm out from under the sheets, if anything to tell Elena why not to touch it without having to speak the words he once hoped he'd never have to say again. He cradled his elbow into the palm of his other hand, draping the arm across his aching chest. The cast on the arm said it for him.

"It's not a Turk thing, Elena," Tseng said quietly. "It's a Reno thing."

Reno's closed eyes relaxed and he lowered his chin to his chest. He remembered the time when………

He was 13, young and indestructable, even though the emergency room had become like a second home to him. Though the visits were sometimes in vain as he managed to escape injury some of the time, he would often go home in a cast or on crutches.

The most frequent recipient of such necessary medical treatment was his right wrist. The troubles with it began at such an early age that his mother swore he was supposed to be right-handed and just learned to write lefty out of pure necessity. It seemed not a year would go by without him suffering fractures, punctuated by the occasional sprain.

His mother died when he was 10, and his father continued to raise him in their home on the Sector 3 plate while making a living working for Shinra. His bond with his father strengthened over the next 3 years.

Young Reno's most recent chain of visits to the hospital, however, was not the routine he was accustomed to. Over the summer, he'd once again cracked a few bones in it. The doctors ran a battery of scans and tests on him and would tell his father what they thought. Soon, he'd found himself going into the hospital for the first of what would eventually be two surgeries to fix his abused, weakened wrist.

He returned to school in a cast that extended from above his elbow to his finger tips and would be kept out of Phys Ed class for an entire semester. Weekly follow-up visits with the surgeon got to be grueling. Occasionally, they would give him a new cast to accommodate the atrophy that shrank his arm, and half way through his recovery, he only needed one from _below_ the elbow to his hand.

But the most triumphant day for him was the day that the cast was taken off for good. Unknown to him, his father was ready for this day as well.

His arm was severely atrophied, having been immobile for 12 weeks since his first surgery. Upon returning home from the hospital that day, his father brought him down to the workshop in the basement of their home.

"People said for years that bronze can not conduct materia energies. You need an expensive or otherwise heavy metal to conduct spirit energy from the wearer to the materia orb that the accessory contains," his dad told him.

Reno didn't particularly care about his dad's work in Shinra's Materia Research lab, but being a good son, he was a willing audience to his father's discoveries especially since his mom died.

"However, I've devised a way to get bronze to conduct enough spirit energy to activate _one_ orb of materia." He showed his boy the result of his at-home research project.

Reno looked at it with mild interest, trying to look happy for the sake of his widowed dad. He was a bit more enthralled by his newly restored ability to move his wrist and forearm, though it was painfully stiff and hardly able to budge at all.

"Bronze, however…" his dad's voice took on a disappointing tone. "…doesn't make for strong armor that Shinra would be interested in. The effort it takes to make it work does not fit the inexpensiveness of the metal, not to mention the fact that one lone materia slot is a bit too few for the needs of Shinra's soldiers."

The young Reno started to rub his aching hand, but his dad reached for it and carefully lifted it. He placed his bronze creation around Reno's repaired wrist, over the layer of supportive elastic bandages that presently wrapped the atrophied joint.

"I want you to have it, son," his dad said, rubbing a thumb over the green orb that was set into the bronze bangle. "I've seen your potential to channel magical energies before. You inherited the ability from me. Some day, when you're stronger, you'll be able to use this orb. Meanwhile, I give it to you with the prayer that it will protect you, and especially this arm so you never have to go through such pains again."

He hugged his dad, and after that, he blazed through physical therapy and regained full use of his wrist in a lot less time than his physicians had predicted.

Shortly afterwards, his father was called on by Shinra to assist in the space program, hoping his research in materia would aid them in building a successful rocket, starting with the Shinra No. 23. Times after that where Reno and his father got to meet up were few and far between.

His father left him behind in Midgar upon Reno's request to finish school in the familiar city. His father's salary continued to pay for the house so Reno had a good place to live. The boy, however, began to fit in with an disreputable crowd and was relied upon for his ability to use magic to pull off pranks and vandalism.

He eventually got arrested and sent to a Shinra-sanctioned boarding school where they pressured their students to join the company's growing military as the war against Wutai raged on.

Reno never saw combat on the front-lines and excelled in ways that took him far…farther than he ever thought he could go working for Shinra. Even as a Turk, he'd occasionally look down at his bronze bangle, still worn around his right wrist. How proud is his father of him now? Becoming a Turk was one of the ultimate accomplishments for a Shinra employee, but at what cost to humanity?

The day came that he was overlooking the smoldering remains of an entire sector of Midgar from a hospital room. His father wasn't "with" him that day. Knowing the opposition he faced against the strong rebel faction, Avalanche, he'd been successfully convinced to wear a 4-slot gold bangle in place of his "lucky charm" bronze one.

Elena's innocent eyes turned to her superior. "Well, why can't he just take a potion!? Isn't getting to use them a fringe benefit of the job? They're not available to just any one."

"Potions only restore energy and fighting spirit. It's a myth that they can heal injuries. Even materia isn't the wonder-drug it's rumored to be," Tseng replied.

Reno's thoughts came back to the present. He was still cradling his broken wrist, his thumb absently rubbing against the rough outer layer of hardened fiberglass mesh. Next time he talked to his father, he'd have to tell him…

"I'm sorry, Reno…" Elena turned to him following what was apparently a brief education from Tseng about magical potions and the like.

"It's okay… I'm just a little superstitious, I guess. I swear, if I were had been wearing my bronze bangle, I wouldn't have hurt my arm at all. I know…bronze isn't as strong as gold armor, but it's just… It's… Pffft… That'll teach me…" The pain in both his ribs and his arm seemed to flare all at once, causing him to wince.

Elena touched him, carefully this time, on the shoulder. She didn't seem to understand his reference.

Reno unclenched his eyes slowly and shifted his left hand to cradle his injured one more securely.

"Elena, let me tell you a story…"

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THE END

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For an explaination as to why this fic keeps changing, visit the page on my site: 

The characters in this story are copyrighted material belonging to Squaresoft, Ltd. This original story is (c) 1999, 2000; written by Zeng Li and was thoroughly revised from various original forms yet again in 2005. It is intended only for entertainment and is not for making money.


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